Episode 05: Lost Children

I wasn’t sure if I was going to ask about the children. I wasn’t sure I had the right. I started nannying when I was 21, part of a new generation of young American women who found themselves in the profession through websites like sittercity and care.com as a temporary stepping stone to navigate an unstable economy. The difference was, as most of my friends moved on from the work, I stayed. I connected deeply with it and it ended up being the only real job I had for over a decade. As I approached my thirties and then mid thirties I started to feel that I had more in common with the women who I met on the playground, than those I went to school with. I felt that I was part of an ancient tradition of black mothering. Except unlike a vast majority of nannies, I did not have any biological children of my own. For over a decade, I have come home to roommates and friends, with only myself to support financially. I have felt like a fraud at times, a pretend mother. What had I sacrificed to raise these children of other mothers? I decided I owed it to the narrators and their incredible sacrifice to ask about their children, many were raised by aunts and grandmothers across the east river if not an ocean. These conversations were brief and painful, but I’m glad I asked; because it was within these testimonies that I really understood what it means to be a mother. This project is dedicated to the children who shared their mamas with other children and with me.